Director, Consumer Insights

Excel Sports Management is an industry-leading sports agency representing top-tier talent, blue-chip brands and marquee properties. Our success is rooted in our people, our high character reputation and our commitment to creating a diverse and welcoming workplace. We focus on team chemistry, collaboration, strong relationships, valuable networks, and ambitious ideas to deliver innovative solutions that keep our clients and agency ahead of the curve.

 

Excel Sports Management is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE).

Position Summary

We are building a dedicated consumer insights capability within our Excel Analytics team and are seeking a Director, Consumer Insights to lead that effort from the ground up. This role sits at the intersection of consumer behavior, fandom, sponsorship marketing, and live brand experiences. The Director will own the end-to-end research lifecycle and play a critical role in evolving how sponsorships are measured, moving beyond exposure and valuation to true consumer and business impact. This is a hands-on leadership role for an experienced insights professional who wants to build something meaningful, shape new measurement models, and influence high-profile brand partnerships. This role will be based in Chicago, but open to strong candidates based in NY or LA

 

Roles and Responsibilities

Lead end to end sponsorship and consumer research

• Personally lead and oversee primary research programs, owning the full research lifecycle across quantitative and qualitative methodologies
• Translate research into actionable sponsorship insights for external clients and internal stakeholders
• Lead measurement of B2C experiential marketing and fan activations, capturing the emotional, brand, and behavioral impact of live experiences
• Develop and execute measurement frameworks for B2B hospitality, hosting, and relationship-driven sponsorship programs

Drive Sponsorship ROI & Thought Leadership

• Develop and deploy new sponsorship ROI and impact frameworks
• Integrate consumer insight into broader sponsorship measurement models
• Serve as internal thought leader on consumer insights related to our clients, key cultural trends and behavioral shifts among fans
• Lead advanced analytics initiatives around consumer insights data including segmentations, TURF analyses, con-joint, Max-Diff, and other methodologies

Stakeholder & Client Partnership

• Partner with account team leads, sales and business development colleagues to enhance and communicate commercial appeal of Excel research capabilities
• Support business and client development initiatives with ad-hoc research and insights on varied topics including sponsorship category research, fanbase insights and consumer segmentation
• Act as trusted advisor to internal stakeholders and clients, with the ability to present insights to senior audiences and influence without authority
• Partner with Excel Analytics colleagues on key capability development initiatives related to sponsorship impact, norms/benchmarks and other topics

Tools, Platforms & Vendor Ecosystem

• Serve as a power user of consumer insights and fan intelligence platforms across syndicated data, social listening, media monitoring and other tools
• Lead identification, evaluation and onboarding of new vendors in service to closing key data and capability gaps
• Own strategy and relationships with research vendors and data partners

Build the Function

• Establish and document research best practices and standards
• Help define hiring and scaling roadmap
• Build high-trust relationships with key colleagues that foster the long-term growth and development of Excel Analytics

 

Education and Experience

• 5–10 years of consumer insights experience in an agency or brand environment
• Bachelor’s degree required, preferably in Market Research/Consumer Behavior, Marketing, Psychology or Economics

 

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:

• Demonstrated mastery of key sponsorship marketing or brand partnership drivers, considerations and activation strategies
• End-to-end quantitative and qualitative research expertise, including ability to program surveys independently within major platforms and analyze them via SPSS or similar
• Experience measuring experiential or live events preferred, incorporating multiple data points beyond consumer resp